Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of search methods, search engines and search algorithms for the computer aided searching of information in a database including remote databases accessible through the internet.
Description of Related Art
Globally, hundreds of millions of users make several searches every hour of everyday on the internet seeking information on a vast variety of fields that include information on real estate, homes, automobiles, jobs and personal relationships.
For the searches mentioned above, typically a user submits the name of the item name or place name or person or any phrase or an index number or any other information related to the said item to a database. Such information referred to as search criteria or search string in the context of this invention is presented as a query to a remote database through a user interface for example like an internet portal.
Such an internet portal can be accessed through a desk top personal computer, a network computer, a laptop computer, and a mobile internet device like a tablet personal computer or a mobile telephone.
Once a query is made or a search string is submitted to the database, the database looks for all the entries in the database that match with the search criteria and returns the results to the user through the user interface. In the context of this invention, searches conforming to this method of search are referred to as uni-directional searches.
A large number of methods and algorithms are known in the prior art for making such uni-directional searches efficiently.
Methods for automatically updating the information available in a database, based on inputs by multiple users on a real time basis is also known in the prior art.
However, the uni-directional search methods impart a serious impediment to the user. For example, a user seeking for a job opportunity typically accesses a job-search website and submits certain keywords or search strings related to the job sought and gets the results that are available with the database at that particular point of time. This is true for the search on an automobile or a home or a personal relationship.
When the database is updated at a later time with new information by some other user or the database administrator, in the prior art methods, the updated information is not readily and automatically available to the original searcher except through accessing the database at frequent intervals and checking for any new updates.
Limited ‘alert’ services are known in the prior art when a user is alerted by an email or a text message when a matching criterion is that he or she placed in a database is met.
However, such alert services are vastly in-effective because they are limited to one particular database owner thus forcing the information seeker to register with multiple information providers. The examples of such alert services are users getting an email with the links from a particular newspaper, journal or a website.
The limitation of the prior-art methods arises from the uni-directional nature of the search treating information seeker as the ‘seeker’ and the database as the single information provider, notwithstanding the fact that the database can be updated on a real time basis by multiple users.
The method described in this invention disclosure, named as ‘Multi-directional Match Engine’ eliminates this shortcoming by making all the users as ‘information seekers’ and dynamically matches the criteria of one particular information seeker with information provided by other users making the match on a pre-set criteria selected by the individual users.
Even though, the method is named as ‘Multi Directional Match Engine’ a vast majority of the search processes involve a two way match for most of the searches. The algorithm described here in terms of examples and figures is considered a ‘bi-directional match’ as an example and the term is used as a sub-set of a multi-directional match. Those familiar with the art can very easily relate or extend one to the other.